Two stories that caught my attention this week have to do with persecution of Christians in foreign countries. I’m always amazed at how many people have no idea that Christians are persecuted in other parts of the world. It is something that often escapes my friends on the far left of the political spectrum. It seems in the minds of many, religious persecution is something that happens only to minority religions or Islam. When questioned about Christian persecution, I can almost see the images of lions and Roman arenas forming in the heads of my friends, rather than say a lone Chinese preacher languishing in a cell or in recent events: A lone Pakistani member of parliment who dared protest Pakistan’s blasphemy laws as a representative of all the non-Muslim citizens of Pakistan. Shahbaz Bhatti was remarkable. I only heard of him after his assassination which is sad. I would like to have followed him before he became famous for dying. But his death is what he will always be remembered for:

I think the most poignant moment in that interview Continue reading …

Being a student of history, I enjoy reading books, articles, poems and speeches, even technical works, in their historical/grammatical setting. This is true of the Bible as well as other historical works. Doing so gives me a real view into the lives and thinking of folks of yester year. Joy and I have spent a fair amount of time over the years going to Civil War battlefields and reading notes and letters from soldiers on both sides of that terrible conflict. How very human they were and befuddled about the obstinance of those on the other side. The commander of the Army of the Potomac, General George B. McClellan, held a low view of President Abraham Lincoln, referring to him as a baboon. Although McClellan was outstanding at training and preparing an army, he was fairly worthless as far as actually taking an army into battle. He was frozen into inaction by always believing he was outmanned by the other side. At one point, Lincoln sent him a note saying along the lines of: Continue reading …

“What you are doing speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you are saying.”

Beside privacy issues in arguing for abortion, one of the reasons cited was child abuse. An unwanted child, it was argued, increased the instance of child abuse. So, by giving women “choice” that supposedly translated to “every child a wanted child.” That this policy hasn’t dimished child abuse but perhaps has permitted its increase is a discussion for another day. In Do Humans Have Rights That Can Be Violated? I demonstrated that in American law and legislation, humanness and personhood have traditionally been two different things. Human is a statement of biology not personhood. Someone could be biologically human but not legally a person. Since they are not legally a person they have no rights or protections under the law. The one who owns them as property have rights and can pretty much do what they want with their property. According to the Prolife Action League there has been 1.3 million abortions annually since 1973 and as of May 17, 2005 that brought the number to 46 million. This becomes important for two reasons. Economic and end of life questions. A majority of the aborted would have been wage earners and tax payers. By killing off these humans there are less persons available to support the aging cry-baby boomers. As the current administration embarked on “health care reform” one of the questions was how that would impact healthcare for the elderly. Assurances were given that the healthcare would be as good as or better at a lower cost than is currently being charged. Conservatives were firm this was untrue. Now that it has passed, unread by most in the House and Senate who voted for it, we see that conservatives were right, Medicare Reform Means Some Seniors Face Benefit Cuts. Continue reading …

“The government of Vietnam’s desire to reap the benefits of the global economy must be matched by efforts to respect comprehensive human rights,” a bipartisan group of 19 members of Congress wrote to Clinton on July 15.

This was an interesting paragraph in the article Clinton pushes Vietnam on human rights progress. It also helped to begin crystallizing something I have been thinking about. Do humans have rights solely based on being human? Rather than simply making an assertion I decided to put the question to an organization that specializes in addressing human rights violations, Amnesty International. I emailed them and asked:

There seems to be some confusion when using the term phrase “human rights.”Do you mean by this that humans have rights based solely on being human? If a nation decides that a human is not legally a person and therefore has no rights, for only persons have rights, is that something you affirm?

The question is fairly simple and straightforward. Do humans have rights because they are human or is there some other criteria for protecting rights? Perhaps a human has no rights because the law makers used some arbitrary criteria to define personhood and then only protect the rights of those who are legally a person. In this scenario non-persons, human or not, do not have any legal rights nor are deserving of protection. I received a response back in less than 24 hours: Continue reading …